


Make Much of Me

by vellaphoria



Category: DCU, DCU (Comics), Red Robin (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Supernatural Hunters, Dubcon Kissing, M/M, demon!Ra's, implied dubcon other things, tfw you broker an ill-advised deal with a demon to save your foster dad from hell
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-27
Updated: 2019-09-27
Packaged: 2020-10-29 01:23:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,991
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20788262
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vellaphoria/pseuds/vellaphoria
Summary: It's both more and less than what Tim thought he'd have to sacrifice to bring Bruce back.But people have madeworsedeals with demons.





	Make Much of Me

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Day Three of Ra's/Bat week 2019: Deal with a Demon
> 
> Title borrowed from [Goblin Market](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44996/goblin-market) by Christina Rossetti

Technically, Bruce only ever taught Tim how to draw banishment and entrapment circles.

Tim’s always known his mentor had his reasons. But he can’t say that he’d ever expected to learn them first hand.

As it turns out, drawing a summoning circle is both incredibly more complicated and unspeakably more dangerous.

Tim turns back to the grimoire sitting open on the room’s side table. The pages are old and dusty with disuse, their edges yellowed with age. The spine is cracked and abused where a few too many near-discoveries caused various magic users to stash the text far too quickly.

Or, not quickly enough in this case. The only reason Tim even has this is because he’d caught its previous owner before she could re-hide it. Witches were weird like that. They’d protect their knowledge before even their own lives, usually choosing self-sacrifice in order to protect these texts for the next generation of magic users. Before all their work could be destroyed by people like Bruce… and like Tim, he supposes.

Tim’s never agreed with the destruction of knowledge, personally. But he gets why Bruce does it. In the wrong hands, these sorts of secrets would be devastating. Not to mention that there weren’t really the right hands when it came to something like demon summoning.

But Bruce…

Bruce is dead.

Dragged to hell and trapped there like some sort of amateur.

His sacrifice had saved Gotham.

But his death had damned them all.

Tim flips through a few more pages. The theory is there. And he thinks he’s accounted for all possible permutations of the summoning ring. But demons have a reputation for a reason. They’re almost as bad as the fae when it comes to tricky contracts. Impatience – or, worse, outright carelessness – can get a witch (or a witch-hunter) killed.

Especially with the particular demon that Tim’s trying to summon.

He turns back from the book, the design of the summoning firmly fixed in his mind.

White chalk scrapes across the floor. Particulates of it smear into the wood, scuffing beneath Tim’s boots, but it doesn’t matter as long as the lines themselves are unbroken. Between each point of the pentagram, he draws the alchemical symbols for tin and impure lead, for Jupiter and Saturn. Further symbols invoking Algol, the first of the Behenian stars.

He fills the circle surrounding the pentagram with demonic invocations, copying those laid out in the grimoire down to the exact angle of each curve and point.

Demonic names don’t really make sense in English – or in any other human language, for that matter. They’re long, twisting things that Tim has only ever heard spoken aloud a handful of times in the years he’s trained as a hunter. Without the right protection, they can burst eardrums with a single syllable or cause an incautious summoner to cry tears of blood.

Tim feels his heartrate double as he angles the chalk to draw the last line of the invocation.

No turning back.

With a sharp, desperate breath, Tim finishes the line.

Light springs up from it, strong enough to nearly light the room. Tim scrambles back with something less than grace. His back hits the wall by the table holding his supplies. The stone is cold, even through the leather of his jacket.

There isn’t long now. Tim has to move fast, or else risk the window closing.

He moves the grimoire to the side as carefully as possible, taking care not to further damage its pages. The sprawl of chalk behind it gets swept up and shoved carelessly into a nearby satchel – he’ll have no more need for those tonight. In their place, he begins laying out the rest of his materials. A golden bowl encrusted with deep green emeralds. Black hellebore, fresh cut from the garden he’s been cultivating for months now. A single diamond – the biggest he could find through Bruce’s contacts, and larger than anything he’s used before this. The diamond takes the place of honor at the center of the bowl. Around it, Tim arranges the flowers as carefully as possible, maintaining as much of a geometric pattern as their petals – unevenly grown, even with the intervention of magic – allow.

With one hand he picks up the bowl and holds it. The other moves in counterclockwise circles above it as he mutters the enchantment beneath his breath. As quiet as the words are, tireless practice has ensured that each one is perfect in its pronunciation, down to the last syllable.

They have to be.

Before long, the bowl is smoking. With a final word, spoken with the clear resonance of a struck bell, the contents catch fire, consumed by lurid green flames.

It’s bright enough to burn Tim’s eyes, but he squints against it, carrying on.

It only takes him three steps to reach the edge of the circle. With each one, the circle’s glow strengthens until the entire room wavers with pulsing light and the flickering shadows cast by the bowl’s fire.

The time for whispering is over. In shouted words, Tim speaks the last lines of the summoning spell, memorized several times over.

The flames expand, shooting upwards so quickly they nearly burn the fringes of Tim’s overgrown hair. Thick smoke spews forth, choking the air with the acrid stench of brimstone and burning hellebore. It blocks Tim’s vision, spreading until all he can see is the thick, grey cloud and the faint echo of the light from the circle peering through it.

Everything is screaming at Tim to move backward. To leave the room. Running, if possible.

But it's far too late to show that kind of weakness.

He’s come too far and sacrificed far too much to give up now.

For a single, soul-rending second, the entire room is deathly quiet.

The smoke swirls in silence, billowing around the edges of Tim’s jacket, seeping beneath his skin.

And then, all at once, it clears.

The circle is where he drew it, unbroken but alight with green flames that throw far more heat than their size would suggest.

And at the center of it…

At the center stands the patron of the demon star himself.

Ra’s al Ghul, as his cultists call him. The one and only.

His form is mortal, if just barely. Tall and well-built, his skin unwrinkled despite the form’s clear age. His hair is the color of night, spiked to two tips that echo the curl of horns above his head.

The sides of his hair seem whiter than they were the last time Tim saw him. Though he freely admits that the sight of Gotham burning around them may have influenced his perception at the time.

A useless part of Tim’s brain notes that Ra’s is still wearing those ridiculous green robes.

Ra’s looks faintly annoyed for all of a second. But the moment his eyes land on Tim, a fire lights within them.

It sends a chill down Tim’s spine and as something that burns curls through his stomach.

“Timothy,” Ra’s says, lips curving into a smirk. “It has been far too long.”

If Tim had never seen Ra’s again after the last time he tried to drag Gotham to Hell, it would have still been too soon.

But even though Tim is the one outside the circle, he has no delusions about who holds the power here.

“Sure,” Tim says, keeping his standoffishness as ambiguous as possible. “If you say so.”

“I do say so,” Ra’s purrs, trying to step forward. The circle’s glow pulses, brightening where he tries to move.

If Tim didn’t know better, he’d say something like frustration crosses Ra’s’ face.

“Clever,” Ra’s says. “But I have little doubt that you are also clever enough to know that this will not hold me forever.”

“I’m aware.” Tim weighs the costs of saying more against the benefits of making his request before Ra’s can escape and probably kill him.

It’s not much of a decision.

“I’d like to make a deal,” Tim continues. There’s no point in dancing around it.

The smoke curling around Ra’s speeds up by just a fraction. Tim has his attention.

“I’m sure your informants on the mortal plane told you what happened to my mentor. To Bruce.”

Ra’s raises a single hand, inspecting doubtlessly immaculate obsidian claws.

“I have,” he says, feigning disinterest.

At least, Tim hopes he is. He sucks in a deep breath, and in the surest voice he can muster he asks, “I want you to bring him back to the mortal plane physically, emotionally, and mentally unharmed, with his soul intact.”

Glowing, emerald eyes snap to Tim. For a moment, he thinks they might light him on fire.

“Is that all?”

If Tim feels momentary confusion, he blinks it away.

“Yes.”

The smoke in the circle roils. Bare wisps of it seep through the column of light and fire created by the circle. There isn’t much time.

“A pity,” Ra’s says. “I’d hoped for something a bit more interesting.”

“Interesting…?”

“Yes,” Ra’s emphasizes. “Or did you perhaps consider yourself to be original when you decided to make a deal with a demon to save a loved one from the Pit?”

Tim’s face begins to burn, though he tries to force it down.

But Ra’s isn’t done.

“And beyond that,” he continues. “Why you would want to save him is beyond even my considerable knowledge. Is he not the one who tempted you to this life so many years ago? Does he not recruit child soldiers to fight this pointless war of his? Is he not responsible for the consignment of Jason Todd’s soul to the depths of – ”

“Don’t –” Tim interrupts, cutting Ra’s off. “Do not pretend like you had nothing to do with that, you sick bastard.”

Ra’s raises an eyebrow. His thumb claw scrapes down the side of his pointer finger’s claw, sharpening it. It takes Tim the space of two heartbeats to realize his mistake.

“Um…” he stammers. “Forgive me, I did not think.”

“You did not,” Ra’s agrees. His eyes narrow. The fire burns hotter.

Ra’s smiles.

In all of a second, the tension dissipates. The scraping of claws ceases.

“I imagine it is a mistake you will not repeat.” Ra’s edges a single foot towards the edge of the circle. It bends and warps with his movement, but it doesn’t quite break.

Tick tock.

Tim takes a breath to calm himself.

“Those are my terms for the deal. If it interests you, name your price.”

It is, of course, the height of rudeness to attempt to name a demon’s terms for them. The trick is in figuring out the difference between what a demon tells you, and what a demon means. Tim’s heard more than a few horror stories from people who had misunderstood their contracts and ended up giving away far more than they ever intended.

But that’s not Tim’s problem right now. As long as Bruce is returned to them alive and healthy, he doesn’t care what he has to give up.

A dangerous position for any hunter to be in.

“For a request this deeply insipid,” Ra’s sneers. “The only promise I would normally make is that I would dispose of the one who asked in the most creatively painful way possible, if only to amuse myself after having had my time wasted.”

Though there is only annoyance in his voice, the smoke surrounding Ra’s doesn’t burst into actual flame.

Ra’s raises a hand. Glistening claws filed to sharp points poke through the barrier of light.

Tim’s eyes widen a fraction. He can’t even hide it.

“And yet,” Ra’s continues. “You and the rest of your mentor’s brood have amused me in the past. And my daughter’s ungrateful spawn does deign to spend his time among you…”

That little cambion brat accounts for more than half of the reasons why Tim set out on this veritable suicide mission in the first place.

He rather wisely chooses not to share that thought.

The smoke billows, though the speed at which it does so slows considerably.

A thoughtful expression crosses the demon’s face.

Incrementally, the fire begins to fade.

“Very well,” Ra’s says. “I shall grant you this favor, and your mentor shall be returned to you sound of body, mind, and soul. In return, I require only one thing. Something to compensate me for my time and to alleviate the boredom of this trivial ordeal…”

Tim’s breath catches in his lungs. Hot air swirls around them. Tongues of flame flicker past the bounds of the circle.

When it seems like Ra’s isn’t going to take mercy and finish the thought, Tim does his best to swallow the heart that’s lept into his throat.

“Name your price,” he says through gritted teeth.

And Ra’s pointed smile practically splits his face.

“All this, I ask in exchange for your body.”

Ra’s says it softly, practically whispering in that throaty rasp of his.

For a moment, Tim thinks he misheard.

‘Your body’ could mean any number of things, most of which Tim doesn’t care to think on.

Maybe Ra’s is just hungry and had a craving for human flesh. Or maybe…

Back when Tim was just a little kid following around big, intimidating hunters with a camera, he saw one of Bruce’s early fights with Ra’s. They’d sparred in the middle of Gotham’s graveyard, by the place where Bruce’s parents had been buried. Ra’s had split the ground open and summoned a Lazarus Pit, as Dick would later explain to Tim.

Ra’s had meant to use it to hijack Bruce’s body.

In front of Tim, Ra’s tests the circle again. His foot edges through it, but the rest of him stays trapped.

Here’s the thing about demons: the more powerful they are, the less time they can spend in the mortal realm while unaided by any other magics. A demon as powerful as Ra’s… Tim would be surprised if he could keep his form manifested for long. But if he’d managed to possess a body like Bruce’s? He’d be able to stay indefinitely. Not to mention all the havoc he could cause moonlighting as Gotham’s senior hunter.

Tim narrows his eyes. That sort of hijacking would certainly be a downside. Even if he and Dick are fighting right now, he hates to think of the look in Dick’s face if he saw Ra’s riding Tim’s corpse around on the surface.

But when he really thinks about it… it’s better if it’s him than anyone else. The hunting community already thinks he’s crazy for thinking he can get Bruce back. He’s probably on so many watchlists that they’ll figure out he’s really Ra’s before the bastard can even fuck anything up.

It’s almost like Tim, out of anyone in Gotham, is meant to be here. To be the one to do this.

“Fine,” Tim sneers. “You have a deal.”

The fire flares. Its light suffocates the room, momentarily blinding Tim. When it darkens again, small licks of fire flicker against the floorboards. The smoke has made a return, but this time it curls around Tim’s legs, clinging to him.

When his eyes refocus, the circle is nowhere to be seen.

And Ra’s…

Ra’s is close enough to touch, towering over Tim. A clawed hand moves to his jaw, turning his head side to side as Ra’s inspects him like a damn horse.

“Perfect,” Ra’s purrs. It’s quiet enough that he may have not meant it for Tim’s ears, if Ra’s were capable of such an oversight.

Tim stiffens as the points of Ra’s’ claws dig into his skin.

There’s only one way to seal a deal with a demon.

Somehow, knowing that doesn’t make this any easier.

And, of course, Ra’s has to be a bastard about it.

The tips of his claws ghost along the edge of Tim’s jaw, down his neck. Tim’s heart trips into double-time as they pass his jugular. One move and Ra’s could end it all

But he doesn’t.

Instead, the hand drifts lower, hooking around the collar of Tim’s leather jacket and yanking him forward.

Ra's doesn’t hold back.

The movement jolts Tim, sending him crashing into Ra’s’ broad chest. It’s warm even through the fine, rich fabric of Ra’s suit. Like fire is trapped just beneath the skin of Ra's' material form.

But the terms are the terms, and Tim doesn’t dare move back.

An arm loops around Tim, Ra's' hand pressing tight to his lower back.

Tim looks up, meeting Ra's' gaze defiantly.

"Get on with it," he hisses. The air around Tim is _burning_, and he doesn't know how much longer he can take it.

"So quick to demand, Timothy," Ra's says. "Yet slow to take initiative. Were _you _not the one who wanted this deal in the first place?"

Tim narrows his eyes, glaring.

Ra's laughs like a fucking bastard.

"Surely you know what to do?" Ra's taunts.

Tim's heart flips over in his rib cage.

"Unless..." Ra's trails off, his expression thoughtful. The hand buried in Tim's jacket moves to trace his lower lip, the tip of Ra's' claw just barely poking beyond the seam of his mouth. "Is this your first, little viper?"

At that, Tim _does_ try to pull back, but the hand hooked around him won't let him.

Ra's only pulls him closer, until they're pressed so lose that there isn't even air between them.

"That you would come to me, offering _this_, when you had not even tasted the _barest_ pleasure at the hands of another... little viper, you _flatter _me."

"Or the situation's just _desperate,_" Tim rebuts.

Ra's expression tells Tim that the demon doesn't much care one way or the other.

"You do not yet know the _meaning_ of desperation," Ra's says. "But under my _care_, I suspect you will soon."

Tim honestly wants to throw up a little. But he stands his ground.

"Do your worst, _demon_," he spits.

"Oh, I will."

A smile creeps across Ra's face. The thumb at Tim's lips parts them, dipping inside Tim's mouth before retreating lightning-quick.

Tim's mouth is left with the taste of cinnamon and what he imagines fire would taste like if he had even more of a deathwish.

"But," Ra's says, "I am a demon of my word. And I will not take that which is not freely given."

Tim stares.

Ra's stares back. He doesn't move.

All at once, it dawns on Tim what Ra's is expecting him to do.

"I hate you," Tim says. "_So _much_._"

Ra's just smiles.

The air between them is hot and dry.

Tim lets himself close his eyes for five full seconds, caught in Ra's' arms, dreading the inevitable.

When he opens them, he hopes it's with something like resolve.

Before Tim can talk himself out of it, he lurches forward and up, pushing up onto the tips of his toes. His lips crush against Ra's' with all the softness of sandpaper on brick.

It burns, at first. Ra's' skin is hot to the touch, and when he opens his mouth to bite at Tim's lip, the blood he draws is almost cold by comparison. Tim bites back, snapping at empty air before one of Ra's' hands comes up to twist itself in Tim's hair, yanking his head back as Ra's' seals his mouth over Tim's once more. A searing tongue forces its way past Tim's lips and - to his mortification - he finds himself moaning at the heat of it.

Ra's takes it as encouragement.

With a jolt of speed faster than Tim can comprehend, Ra's has him pushed up against the wall, bracketed between rough stone and the expensive fabric. With the new angle, Ra's plunders Tim's mouth. A hand runs down Tim's chest, leaving a slow-burning trail in its wake. The press of Ra's' muscles against him is unyielding.

And Tim -

Tim gives in.

Without thinking, Tim reaches up to grab one of Ra's' horns, pulling himself further into the kiss. It could last a minute, or it could last a year. All Tim knows is that by the end of it, he's a shaking, whimpering wreck held up only by the strength of Ra's' muscles and the intensity of the stare with which Ra's pins him to the wall.

No words pass between them, but no words need to.

The deal is sealed. Several times over, in fact.

With a final, strangely chaste press of Ra's' lips to Tim's closed mouth, the demon steps back.

Tim sags back against the wall, spent.

"Perhaps this will be more interesting than I had thought," Ra's says. He offers his hand to Tim.

Tim ignores it, pushing himself to his feet under his own power.

"Thought you would have taken my body and run by now," Tim mutters.

The look Ra's gives him is... odd, to say the least.

"Did I not say, Timothy, that I would only take what was offered?"

Tim narrows his eyes. "I _did _technically agree to let you pilot my meat suit around on the mortal plane, so I kinda figured that was more talk than anything."

Ra's has the audacity to _laugh_.

There few sounds in hell that can compare to a demon laughing, and fewer still on earth. There's just something uniquely terrifying about it that makes Tim want to recoil, even _with_ his extensive training with Gotham's hunters.

Tim doesn't get his answer until Ra's finally stops laughing enough to be comprehensible.

"Oh, little viper," Ra's chuckles. "I believe you have a _fundamental_ misunderstanding of what you've offered me."

"Is that so?" Tim mutters.

Ra's quirks an eyebrow. "When I said the price would be your body, surely you knew that it would be in the most _carnal _sense?"

Tim blinks at Ra's, the idea settling in his brain like a falcon on an ungloved hand.

"Fuck _no_," Tim nearly shouts, pressing himself closer to the wall.

Ra's raises his open palms in front of him, placating.

"There is no need for that, Timothy. As I said, I will only take what is freely offered."

And Tim, damn him, feels _just_ a bit of the tenseness in his traitorous body dissipate.

Ra's sees it too, if that _smirk_ is anything to go by.

"But believe me, little viper." Ra's continues. "In time, you _will_ offer."

And with that, a hot, bitter wind rushes through the room. Tim forces his eyes closed against it, and when he opens them, Ra's, the circle, and the demon-summoning grimoire are gone. Just like that.

All that's left in the room is a single burning candle and a small, glittering thing discarded on the floor.

When Tim finally stops shaking enough to inspect it, he finds himself holding a heavy, intricate ring up to the flame.

The gem is an emerald so luridly green that it's almost nauseating, and whenever Tim isn't looking directly at it, he swears that some sort of pulsing light emanates from within. The band that it's set in is gold and heavily detailed with sigils of warding and protection and _ownership._

Tim doesn't _need _the book to know that Ra's means this to be the physical evidence of their bond; Ra's anchor to the mortal plane.

When he slides it on his ring finger - the right one, thank you very much - he finds that it fits perfectly.

The last naïve, hopeful part of his brain wonders what Tim's just gotten himself into.

The rest of him knows that it doesn't matter. This pact with Ra's is just a means to an end for both of them, and Tim is fully committed to doing _whatever_ it takes to bring Bruce back from Hell.

Now, there's no turning back. And, as Tim packs up the rest of his supplies and as the ring sits heavily on his finger, he finds that he doesn't quite mind.

After all, he's always been willing to do whatever it takes.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm also on [tumblr](https://vellaphoria.tumblr.com/) :D


End file.
